Wednesday, September 28, 2016

A few years ago, I spent about 6 months looking for a conservative thinker who wasn't basically a crackpot. Aside from Russell Kirk, I came up empty. There are occasional outbursts of sanity from Ponnuru and a few others but until now, I was unaware of any current Amrican conservative who was consistently sane. My new hero until further notice is Samuel Goldman. He makes obviously good points, such as:

I think the great message of Trump is that there really are not that many movement conservatives.

and

A lot of conservatives — not so much political professionals who spend their time studying the numbers, but rank-and-file Republicans and voters — really seemed to believe that they are a silent majority. In some ways, this election could be described as the story of a minority that thinks it's a majority.

The latter delusion is heavily promoted by talk radio gasbags like Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck and Levin.

It’s hard to say what would have happened if the administration had failed to secure the stimulus and funds to insure international liquidity in 2009 and 2010. But the bottom did not fall out of the economy. The administration deserves credit for this.

Tough as things are, the U.S. economy is also doing better than other countries’. That’s partly due to the energy boom, which is sheer luck. But Obama’s opposition to the kind of austerity policies that are causing so much pain in Europe also has something to do with it.